Review: The End is Near and It's Going To Be Awesome!

In his new book, The End Is Near and It's Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure, Kevin D. Williamson examines the crisis of the modern welfare state and demonstrates that the crucial political failures of our time are the direct result of government monopolies. Entitlement programs have stifled innovation and efficiency in attempts to deliver failed promises.

There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel, as millions of people reject the status quo and turn to their own ingenuity to create successful market-derived alternatives to these government monopolies.

It's time for an examination of the current state of entitlement programs and a lively discussion of how the free-market responds when the government fails. In The End Is Near and It's Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure, Kevin Williamson’s making the bold argument that the United States government is disintegrating—and that it is a good thing!

Sufrely one of the most important books of 2013 author of the ‘Exchequer’ blog, offers a radical re-envisioning of government, a powerful analysis of why it doesn’t work, and an exploration of the innovative solutions to various social problems that are spontaneously emerging as a result of the failure of politics and government.

Critical and compelling, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome lays out a thoughtful plan for a new system, one based on success stories from around the country, from those who home-school their children to others who have successfully created their own currency. It is a radical re-visioning of what government is, a powerful analysis of why it doesn’t work, and an exploration of the innovative solutions spontaneously emerging thanks to the fortunate failure of politics.

Every year, consumer goods and services get better, cheaper, and more widely available while critical necessities delivered by government grow more expensive, even as their quality declines. The reason for this paradox is simple: politics. Not bad politics, not liberal politics, not conservative politics, not politics corrupted by big money or distorted by special-interest groups, but the simple practice of delivering goods and services through federal, state, and local governments and their obsolete decision-making practices. 

Williamson describes the crisis of the modern welfare state in the era of globalization and argues that the crucial political failures of our time—education, health care, social security, and monetary policy—are due not to ideology but the nature of politics itself.

Meanwhile, those who can’t or won’t turn to the state for goods and services—from homeschoolers to Wall Street to organized crime—are experimenting with replacing the outmoded social software of the state with market-derived alternatives. The book compellingly analyzes the government’s numerous failures and reports on the solutions that people all over the country are discovering.

You will meet homeschoolers who have abandoned public schools; see inside private courtrooms that administer the law beyond government; encounter entrepreneurs developing everything from private currencies to shadow intelligence agencies rivaling the CIA; and learn about the remarkably peaceable enforcement of justice in the allegedly lawless Wild West.

As our outmoded twentieth-century government collapses under the weight of its own incompetence and inefficiency, Williamson points to the green shoots of the brave new world that is already being born. Leaving the world richer, happier, and more secure!

Interview of PJM's Ed Driscoll with Kevin D, Williamson >>>

There’s been a lot of talk in the Blogosphere on how to “Enjoy the Decline ,” spurred on by the popular book with that title by econo-blogger Aaron Clarey on America’s future — or the lack thereof. But what happens next? What happens after the decline?